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War with Mexico
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
-Rio Grande is southern border of Texas
-US takes over Cali. and New Mexico -
Compromise of 1850
-Instated the Fugitive Slave Act , banning slave trade in DC, admitting California as a free state, splitting up the Texas territory, and instating popular sovereignty in the Mexican Cession
-Forestalled the civil war -
Fugitive Slave Law
Provided southern slaveholders with legal weapons to capture slaves who had escaped to the free states -
Period: to
Underground Railroad
A network of abolitionists that secretly helped slaves escape to freedom by setting up hiding places and routes to the North.
-Harriet Tubman was the key to its success -
Kansas Nebraska Act
Slavery in Kansas and Nebraska would be decided by popular sovereignty -
Bleeding Kansas
Slavery in Kansas and Nebraska would be decided by popular sovereignty -
Republican Party Established
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Sumner-Brooks Incident
Charles Sumner gave a two day speech on the Senate floor. He denounced the South for crimes against Kansas, singled out Senator Andrew Brooks of South Carolina for extra abuse. Brooks beat Sumner over the head with his cane, severely crippling him. -
Panic of 1857
-Financial Panic - midwestern farmer prices dropped drastically
-Unemployment in northern cities rises
-Southern Cities not affected- Thought they were superior and
continued with union that northern economy was not needed. -
Dred Scott v Sandford
Ruled a slave in a free state was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional. -
Lecompton Constitution
Contained clauses protecting slave holding and a bill of rights excluding free blacks, and it added to the frictions leading up to the U.S. Civil War. -
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Senatorial campaign, largely concerning the issue of slavery extension into the territories. -
John Brown’s Raid
A small army of 18 men into the small town of Harper's Ferry, Virginia to instigate a major slave rebellion in the South. -
Election of 1860
Republican Abraham Lincoln defeated Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas.